Cartoons tend to follow certain patterns when it comes to the Villains that the Heroes face week after week.
1. The Single Recurring Villain
This bad guy continually plots and schemes against the forces of good, often assisted by henchmen with varying degrees of ineptness.
2. The Rogue's Gallery
The hero has a collection of enemies who rotate appearances on a story by story basis.
3. New Villain Every Week
Every week, somebody new shows up to give the Heroes problems.
Which method do you prefer? Does the genre or tone of the series make a certain setup more or less effective? If you GM a CAH campaign, which setup has worked best for you? Which setup do your players seem to enjoy most?
Derek Devlin
How about number 2 with a very powerful villain who is controling them, but you won't face into the final episode of the season?
When I run CAH, I tend to go with #1. I keep one definitive batch of baddies around for the protagonists to fight. Each season, I create a handful of new additions to add to the mix, while phasing out a few of the old ones. This is how most of the retro-toons did it.
As a side note, I sometimes re-work existing villains to reflect that a new toy variant has "been released".
I think the default is sort of a combination of one and two- there's usually one big central villain, and the henchman form a "rogue's gallery" because of their distinct abilities. Sometimes however the shows would drop in a few "new" villains not directly related to the evil guy's scheme.
In some ways this sort of mirrors how the good guys are set up. In HE-MAN, you've got a distinct Hero, a distinct Snarling Villain, and lots of very colorful and unique allies and villains. With G.I. JOE there's a clear leader to both groups (Joe and Cobra), but as often as not it's one of the "supporting" characters who does the most. So I guess I'd arrange the bad guys in a given series based on how the PCs are related to each other.
I like my bad guys toasted with a side of sweet mustard.
Seriously, it depends on the game. In general I like using certain very powerful bad guys as recurring characters, but also bringing in new baddies every few sessions (about 2-3 new ones a season). This way, the players get the comfort of familiarity that comes with facing the same menace every week, along with the novelty of facing an unknown quality and all of the excitement that goes with it.